Saturday, March 21, 2009

First Goose Egg of 2009



Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Let it be known that spring has officially begun! The younger African goose has laid her very first egg of the year. The gander has not yet turned defensive and bitey, but this is soon to come I am sure. They are becoming more attached to their pen, as is par for the course.

We found out the first year that we did not prefer the taste and texture of goose eggs over our chickens'. We ended up blowing them all out to use for future eggery crafts. At first, we would drill two holes, one in either end and then blow them out! Boy, was that a headache...literally. DH came up with the idea to use a syringe. We would drill one hole with the Dremel and inserted the needle of a syringe and then draw the white and yolk out. The yolk had to be scrambled first with a bamboo skewer. Much easier! and it was nice to have one hole in the shell only.

I mainly wanted to use the goose eggs for Pysanky, so I was still wondering how I was going to deal with keeping dye out of the hole. Usually Pysanky is done on raw eggs and eventually the egg will dry out after some years. Sometimes the egg will rot and explode! I did not want to take this risk, especially after doing what would be hours of work for me.

The final, happy solution was to set the whole eggs, pointed end up, in a flat box filled half way with silica sand. It has taken about a year and a half, but I now have some whole goose eggs that are completely dry. The dried yolk moves around in the shell like a marble, but the white seems to evaporate through the porous shell. Best of all-- no holes!

I am thinking of trying to bury the eggs in SILICA (used for drying flowers) this year to see if they dry out any faster.

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